Today we’d like to introduce you to Jen McKee.
Hi Jen, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I actually fell into the trades completely by accident.
In 2021, I was running my marketing agency when I started working with my first plumbing client. She wanted her company to be everywhere, and I wanted a social media client I could put on TikTok—so we decided to try it.
At the time, most home service companies using social media were creating content for other people in the trades. We took a different approach and started creating content for homeowners—content that was educational, entertaining, showed off the people behind the company, and built trust before someone ever needed to make a service call.
It worked. The company started getting attention, people in the industry started asking who was doing their social media, and referrals began coming in. Before I knew it, Kee Hart Marketing had found its niche.
What really made me fall in love with this industry, though, was the people. So many business owners in the trades have built something incredible from very little. They’re family businesses, husbands and wives working together, parents building something for their kids, and people creating opportunities for their employees and communities.
Today, Kee Hart Marketing helps home service companies use social media, video, advertising, and personal branding to become more visible, build trust, and grow their businesses. We’ve grown tremendously since that first plumbing client, but the thing I care about most hasn’t really changed: helping great people and great businesses make sure the world knows who they are.
And somehow, what started as me simply wanting a client I could put on TikTok turned into an entire career and industry I absolutely love.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Definitely not—and I think that’s true for most entrepreneurs.
When I first started, I really didn’t know what I was doing. I was fortunate to find a community of women who also worked in social media, and I would literally ask them to coffee so I could ask questions and learn from them. I’m still incredibly grateful for those women.
Then, when I found myself in the trades niche, I had to start over in a lot of ways. I didn’t know the industry or the people in it. So I put myself out there. I showed up, made friends, built relationships, and found people I could call when I had questions.
That’s something I’ve continued to do at every stage of my business. I almost always surround myself with coaches, mentors, or people who have already done what I’m trying to do or have been where I’m trying to go. That has been instrumental in my growth. I’ve learned that you don’t have to know everything—you just have to be willing to ask, learn, and keep going.
But growing a business is also just really hard sometimes. It’s incredibly personal. You’re building something from nothing, putting your ideas, decisions, leadership, and often your identity out there for people to judge. The highs can feel incredibly high, and the lows can feel incredibly low.
One of the biggest things I’ve had to learn is how to stay as close to the middle as possible—to celebrate the wins without believing everything will always be amazing, and to experience the hard seasons without believing everything is falling apart.
There are always going to be waves. The goal isn’t to avoid them; it’s learning how to keep leading through them.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Kee Hart Marketing is a social media marketing agency specializing in the residential home service industry—HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and other trades.
At our core, we help great companies become known.
We specialize in social media strategy and management, short-form video, paid social advertising, and personal branding. But what really sets us apart is that we don’t believe social media should just be a collection of perfectly designed graphics or promotional posts. We believe people connect with people.
Our goal is to take the personality, expertise, culture, people, and stories that already exist inside a business and help bring them to life online. We create content for the homeowner—not just other people in the industry—and focus heavily on video, trends, education, entertainment, community, and the real humans behind the brand.
We’ve also spent years deeply immersing ourselves in the trades. We know this industry. We understand the seasonality, the recruiting challenges, the importance of reviews and reputation, the role family businesses play in their communities, and how differently a $3–5 million home service company needs to market compared to a national brand.
I’m probably most proud of the reputation we’ve built within the industry. Kee Hart has grown largely through relationships and referrals, and we’ve had the opportunity to work with incredible home service companies across the country. We’ve helped businesses find their voice, get comfortable showing up on camera, build personal brands around their owners and leaders, and become recognizable in their own communities.
I want people to know that visibility isn’t vanity. Being known matters. Your customers are looking you up before they call you. They’re deciding whether they trust you long before a technician ever arrives at their home.
Our job is to make sure that when they find you, they see a company—and people—they already feel like they know.
What matters most to you?
Being happy. Feeling good. Enjoying the journey.
I think for a long time it’s easy to believe there’s some destination we’re trying to get to—when the business reaches a certain size, when we make a certain amount of money, when the kids get a little older, when life gets a little easier. Then we’ll be happy.
But there really is no destination. There’s just the ride we’re on.
I don’t practice this perfectly. I’m ambitious, I have big goals, and I can absolutely get caught up in what’s next or what’s not going the way I want it to. But the more I prioritize feeling good, being present, noticing what’s working, and being grateful for the life I’m living right now, the better my days—and ultimately my life—become.
I believe what we focus on becomes our reality. There will always be hard things, disappointments, problems and things we can’t control. But there is also so much good happening at the exact same time. We get to decide what we put in focus.
More than anything, that’s what I want my kids to learn from me. It’s what I want my team to feel, and it’s what I hope the people around me take away from knowing me.
Dream big. Go after what you want. Build incredible things. But don’t spend your whole life waiting to arrive somewhere before you let yourself enjoy it.
The journey is the life.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.keehartmarketing.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keehartmarketing/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.hartman.73
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@keehartmarketing
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/kee-hart-marketing-and-events-san-antonio
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@keehartmarketing
